The present invention is generally directed to using multicasting to concurrently image multiple client devices. The present invention is particularly applicable to deploying an image or other update to a large number of thin clients over a network at the same time.
Thin clients are client devices that rely on a server to fulfill its computational roles. For example, the server may execute the operating system and applications that are made accessible at the thin client with the thin client only executing the minimal components required to implement a remote display protocol for communicating with the server. This is in contrast to so-called fat clients which are client devices that can operate independently of the server. Although the present invention is particularly beneficial in client/server environments that include a large number of thin clients, the present invention can be implemented in any client/server environment.
Many entities that maintain a client/server environment desire to periodically update the client devices. One way in which these updates can be performed is by imaging the client devices over a network (e.g., a LAN). In particular, there are various device management tools that can be deployed in a client/server environment to allow IT personnel to remotely manage the client devices. One example of a device management tool is the Dell Wyse Device Manager.
With such device management tools, an individual client device can be easily updated remotely by using a network protocol to transfer an image to the client device. However, if the number of client devices is large, this process of individually updating the client devices becomes a very long and tedious process. For example, if an IT administrator is tasked with updating a subnet of 1000 thin clients, and if the device management tool is configured to allow a maximum of seven simultaneous connections, it can take upwards of ten hours to complete the task (assuming it takes around four minutes to perform a single update). Also, during this update process, the performance of the device management tool will be slowed due to the heavy load. Further, the transmission of the update (e.g., an image) to the large number of thin clients consumes a large amount of bandwidth which may impede other network communications/processes.